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THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY
IN A LETTER TO R.S., ESQ.
Though in some points of doctrine, and perhaps of discipline
I am diffident of lending a perfect assent to that church
which you have so worthily historified, yet may the ill time never
come to me, when with a chilled heart, or a portion of irreverent
sentiment, I shall enter her beautiful and time-hallowed Edifices.
Judge then of my mortification when, after attending the choral
anthems of last Wednesday at Westminster, and being desirous of
renewing my acquaintance, after lapsed years, with the tombs and
antiquities there, I found myself excluded; turned out like a dog,
or some profane person, into the common street, with feelings not
very congenial to the place, or to the solemn service which I had
been listening to. It was a jar after that music.
You had your education at Westminster; and doubtless among
those dim aisles and cloisters, you must have gathered much of
that devotional feeling in those young years, on which your purest
mind feeds still -- and may it feed! The antiquarian spirit, strong in
you, and graceful blending ever with the religious, may have been
sown in you among those wrecks of splendid mortality. You owe
it to the place of your education; you owe it to your learned
fondness for the architecture of your ancestors; you owe it to the
venerableness of your ecclesiastical establishment, which is daily
lessened and called in question through these practices -- to speak
aloud your sense of them; never to desist raising your voice against
them, till they be totally done away with and abolished; till the
doors of Westminster Abbey be no longer closed against the decent,
though low-in-purse, enthusiast, or blameless devotee, who must
commit an injury against his family economy, if he would be indulged
with a bare admission within its walls. You owe it to
the decencies, which you wish to see maintained in its impressive
services, that our Cathedral be no longer an object of inspection to
the poor at those times only, in which they must rob from their
attendance on the worship every minute which they can bestow
upon the fabric. In vain the public prints have taken up this
subject, in vain such poor nameless writers as myself express their
indignation. A word from you, Sir -- a hint in your Journal
would be sufficient to fling open the doors of the Beautiful Temple
again, as we can remember them when we were boys. At that
tin,e of life, what would the imaginative faculty (such as it is) in
both of us, have suffered, if the entrance to so much reflection had
been obstructed by the demand of so much silver -- If we had
scraped it up to gain an occasional admission (as we certainly
should have done) would the sight of those old tombs have been
as impressive to us (while we had been weighing anxiously prudence
against sentiment) as when the gates stood open, as those of the
adjacent Park; when we could walk in at any time, as the mood
brought us, for a shorter or longer time, as that lasted? Is the
being shown over a place the same as silently for ourselves detecting
the genius of it? In no part of our beloved Abbey now can a
person find entrance (out of service time) under the sum of two
shillings. The rich and the great will smile at the anticlimax,
presumed to lie in these two short words. But you can tell them,
Sir, how much quiet worth, how much capacity for enlarged feeling,
how much taste and genius, may coexist, especially in youth, with
a purse incompetent to this demand. -- A respected friend of ours,
during his late visit to the metropolis, presented himself for admission
to Saint Paul's. At the same time a decently clothed man, with
as decent a wife, and child, were bargaining for the same indulgence.
The price was only two-pence each person. The poor but decent
man hesitated, desirous to go in; but there were three of them,
and he turned away reluctantly. Perhaps he wished to have seen
the tomb of Nelson. Perhaps the Interior of the Cathedral was
his object. But in the state of his finances, even sixpence might
reasonably seem too much. Tell the Aristocracy of the country
(no man can do it more impressively); instruct them of what value
these insignificant pieces of money, these minims to their sight,
may be to their humbler brethren. Shame these Sellers out of the
Temple. Stifle not the suggestions of your better nature with the
pretext, that an indiscriminate admission would expose the Tombs
to violation. Remember your boy-days. Did you ever see, or
hear, of a mob in the Abbey, while it was free to all? Do the
rabble come there, or trouble their heads about such speculations?
It is all that you can do to drive them into your churches; they
do not voluntarily offer themselves. They have, alas! no passion
for antiquities; for tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet. If they
had, they would be no longer the rabble.
For forty years that I have known the Fabric, the only well-attested
charge of violation adduced, has been -- a ridiculous dismemberment
committed upon the effigy of that amiable spy, Major
Andre. And is it for this -- the wanton mischief of some schoolboy,
fired perhaps with raw notions of Transatlantic Freedom or
the remote possibility of such a mischief occurring again, so easily
to he prevented by stationing a constable within the walls, if the
vergers are incompetent to the duty -- is it upon such wretched
pretences, that the people of England are made to pay a new
Peter's Pence, so long abrogated; or must content themselves with
contemplating the ragged Exterior of their Cathedral? The mischief
was done about the time that you were a scholar there. Do
you know any thing about the unfortunate relic? --
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